In my aforementioned piece I noted via an update that not more than an hour or two after my piece went online at AM the page to the interview of Rick Warren by John Piper would vanish. I already had on file the pdf transcript done by Warren’s people and also put it at the bottom of that article because it had been removed from the Pastors.com website as well.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

The World Bank noted that emerging markets now account for two- thirds of the world’s foreign exchange reserves–a reversal of the picture of the previous decade when industrialized countries owned the bulk of the reserves.

China has the biggest share of the global reserves among emerging markets at US$3 trillion.

“In short, a new world order with a more diffused distribution of economic power is emerging–thus the shift toward multi- polarity,” the World Bank report.

The rising role of emerging markets would eventually diminish the primacy of the US dollar in international trade and finance. Eventually, countries would keep almost equal shares of the US dollar, the euro and the renminbi in their foreign exchange reserves, the bank added.

“Over the next decade or so, China’s size and the rapid globalization of its corporations and banks will likely mean a more important role for the renminbi. The most likely global currency scenario in 2025 will be a multi-currency systm centered around the dollar, the euro, and the renminbi,” the report said.

*UPDATE* Since this article went online at Apprising Ministries the page to the interview of Rick Warren by John Piper appears to have vanished.

However, I was able to retrieve the video page—at least for now. AM already has the pdf transcript on file, but unfortunately right now it does seem to appear at the website.

Unfortunately well-respected evangelical pastor Dr. John Piper exhibited a real error in judgment when he invited Dr. Rick Warren who, because of bullying tactics so often used in hostile Purpose Driven Church takeovers, I refer to as The Purpose Driven Pope[1] to be the keynote speaker at the Desiring God Conference 2010.

For too brief a time it opened up a bit of a Warrengate across the blogosphere as more and more people found out; and as a precious few of the big “names” within evangelicalism weighed in. Apprising Ministries has been keeping you apprised as to it all as best I can. As a former Roman Catholic, and currently a Southern Baptist minister—as is Rick Warren—it’s no secret that I’m on record as saying that Warren is heretical in, at least, his double-minded stance concerning the Roman Catholic Church...

Saturday, May 14, 2011

One of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant did suffer a nuclear meltdown, Japanese officials admitted for the first time today, describing a pool of molten fuel at the bottom of the reactor's containment vessel.

Engineers from the Tokyo Electric Power company (Tepco) entered the No.1 reactor at the end of last week for the first time and saw the top five feet or so of the core's 13ft-long fuel rods had been exposed to the air and melted down.

Previously, Tepco believed that the core of the reactor was submerged in enough water to keep it stable and that only 55 per cent of the core had been damaged.Now the company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak. Learn how to detox from heavy metal and radiation exposure with Zeolite.

TOLEDO, Ohio -- Wildlife researchers want to know what's killing thousands of walleye in Lake Erie that have been washing up on beaches along its western shore.

It's a big concern for anglers who come from across the Midwest and beyond to catch the lake's most popular sport fish.

The best guess is that the die-off can be blamed on natural causes stemming from the stress of spawning and the cold, stormy spring, said Roger Knight, Lake Erie fisheries program manager for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- A magnitude-6 earthquake shook the capital city of Costa Rica on Friday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake was felt strongly in San Jose but there were no immediate reports damage or injuries, said Juan de Dios Castillo, spokesman for Seismological and Volcanic Institute. He said there were reports of fallen objects but none of major damages to buildings.

New forecasts show a very predominate cloud of radiation that seems to blanket most of the United states in the next few days. Looking at the map you can see that the brunt of this cloud will hit the Western United States as well as Canada very hard. With steady winds flowing from japan and heading east ,we will continue to see this happen. As mentioned in other articles, food supplies have already seen reports of low levels of Radiation being tested, and with these new massive fallout clouds heading east I’m sure these levels will increase. HT: Global RumblingsLearn how to detox from heavy metal and radiation exposure with Zeolite.

THE TELEGRAPHThe Muslim Brotherhood has announced an electoral coalition with a host of Salafi groups in Egypt, under the banner of seeking an Islamic state. “It was the recent attacks on the Islamic groups that brought us together,” the Brotherhood’s lawyer Sobhi Saleh explained to an Egyptian newspaper on Tuesday.

Saleh’s newfound siege mentality is at odds with the confidence he displayed on Newsnight a few months back. A woman or a Christian, the Islamist attorney told Tim Whewell, could never be president of a post-Mubarak Egypt because Muslims constitute “95 per cent of the population” (not true) and this is the “same policy as in Greece, Spain and in England” (what’s the Arabic for “Iron Lady”?).

Among the Brotherhood’s new parliamentary partners is Jama’a al-Islamiyya, a Salafi group that played a role in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and recently advocated the formation of a Saudi-style “modesty police” for Egypt.

...Since the pro-democratic happenings in Tahrir Square in January, Egypt’s Christian minority has been consistently persecuted by uncorked crazies. Churches have been set alight and some areas of the country have grown so parlous that Christians are holed up in their homes, afraid to attend Mass even on Palm Sunday. The assurances of Abd Al-Azim, a leader of Gama’a in Alexandria, will have failed to persuade them to do otherwise: “If the Christians want safety they should submit to the rule of God and be confident that the Islamic sharia will protect them.”

Just this week, 190 people were detained overnight in Cairo after 12 people were killed and over 180 hurt in the working-class neighbourhood of Imbaba, where two Coptic churches and people’s homes were firebombed. The reason? A Salafi-hatched rumour that a Christian woman had converted to Islam in order to marry a Muslim man and was being held against her will in the Saint Mena Church (one of the two burnt). This came after another Christian, Camilia Shehata, had gone on television to deny a similar allegation about her proscribed conversion to Islam.

BUTTE LAROSE, La. -- In an agonizing trade-off, Army engineers said they will open a key spillway along the bulging Mississippi River as early as Saturday and inundate thousands of homes and farms in Louisiana's Cajun country to avert a potentially bigger disaster in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be in harm's way when the gates on the Morganza spillway are unlocked for the first time in 38 years.

Opening the spillway will release a torrent that could submerge about 3,000 squaremiles under as much as 25 feet of water but take the pressure off the downstreamlevees protecting New Orleans, Baton Rouge and the numerous oil refineries andchemical plants along the lower reaches of the Mississippi.

Opening the spillway will release a torrent that could submerge about 3,000 squaremiles under as much as 25 feet of water.

...Dear friends, here is my warning. Make no mistake: Islam is also coming for America. In fact, it is already here. America is facing a stealth jihad, the islamic attempt to introduce sharia law bit by bit. Last March, a judge in Tampa, Florida, ruled that a lawsuit against a mosque and involving the control of 2.4 million dollars, should proceed under Islamic law.

My friends, be aware that this is only the beginning. This is also how it started in Europe. If things continue like this, you will soon have the same problems as we are currently facing.

...If you wear a cross or a kippah in certain urban areas in Europe today, you risk being beaten up. In the capital of my own country, Amsterdam, a tram driver was forced to remove his crucifix from sight, while his Muslim colleagues are allowed to wear the veil.

In June 2008, the Christian church authorities in the Danish town of Arhus decided to pay so-called “protection money” to islamic so-called “security guards” who assure that church goers are not harassed by islamic youths.

On March 31st, 2010, Muslims entered the Roman Catholic cathedral of Cordoba, Spain, and attacked the guards with knives. They claimed the cathedral was theirs.

Last month, the bishops of Sweden sent out a letter to priests advising them to avoid converting asylum seekers from islamic countries to Christianity, because the converts would risk losing their lives.

In the Netherlands, the city authorities in Amsterdam register polygamous marriages. The authorities in Rotterdam serve only halal meals in municipal cafeterias. Theaters provide separate seats for women who are not allowed to sit next to men. Municipal swimming pools have separate swimming hours for men and women, Muslim lawyers do not have to stand when the judges enter court rooms.

Meanwhile Jews are no longer safe on our streets. In Amsterdam, the city of Anne Frank, Jews are again being harassed in the streets. Even political leaders acknowledged that life has become unsafe for Jews in Holland. Do you know what they said? They advised Jews to emigrate. Jews are already running for Israel. But I say: Jews must not leave, violent Muslims must leave!

What is needed, my friends, is a spirit of resistance.

I repeat: What we need is a spirit of resistance.

Why? Because resistance to evil is our moral duty. This resistance begins with expressing our solidarity to Christians, Jews, indeed, to all people worldwide, who are the victims of islam. There are millions of them.

We can see what islam has in store for us if we watch the fate of the Christians in the islamic world, such as the Copts in Egypt, the Maronites in Lebanon, the Assyrians in Iraq, and Christians elsewhere.

Almost every day, churches are arsoned and Christians are assassinated in islamic countries.

In a report on the persecution of Christians in the world, Archbishop Twal of Jerusalem, wrote recently– I quote: “In the Middle East to be Christian means accepting that you must make a great sacrifice. All too often and in many places, Christians suffer various threats. On some occasions, their homes and churches are burnt, and people are killed. How many atrocities must we endure before somebody somewhere comes to our aid?” – end of quote.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Ezekiel 87And he brought me to the entrance of the court, and when I looked, behold, there was a hole in the wall. 8Then he said to me, "Son of man, dig in the wall." So I dug in the wall, and behold, there was an entrance. 9And he said to me, "Go in, and see the vile abominations that they are committing here." 10So I went in and saw. And there, engraved on the wall all around, was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel. 11And before them stood seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them. Each had his censer in his hand, and the smoke of the cloud of incense went up. 12Then he said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures? For they say, 'The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.'" 13He said also to me, "You will see still greater abominations that they commit."

14Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the LORD, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. 15Then he said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? You will see still greater abominations than these."

16And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the LORD. And behold, at the entrance of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs to the temple of the LORD, and their faces toward the east, worshiping the sun toward the east. 17Then he said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations that they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence and provoke me still further to anger? Behold, they put the branch to their nose. 18Therefore I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them."

Friday, May 6, 2011

Aerial view over the city of Cairo, Illinois, USA as it is surrounded by the flooding Ohio River (bottom) and Mississippi River (top) on 03 May 2011. The US Army Corps of Engineers used explosives to created a breach in the Birds Point levee with on 02 May 2011. Officials hoped breaching the levee would allow water to fill the floodway to relieve pressure and lower the flood levels upstream at Cairo and other communities. EPA/ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH/DAVID CARSON

...You must also ask yourself do you really think that in this generation we are seeing the radically changed lives of Christians that we read about in the New Testament; and we have witnessed down through the ages in Church history? And are we Christians turning the world upside down; or, have we in fact become even more worldly since Tozer’s time?

He put his finger right on the problem in his comments about the so-called “new” pragmatic methods of preaching the Gospel, which were just becoming popular back in his day. For truly this weak-willed compromise of Biblical righteousness within the Church Growth Movement is not really new at all. As through the eyes of a prophet, Tozer could see the Willow Creeks and the Saddlebacks and the Lakewoods coming, and in his inimitable style he said:

The old cross [killed] men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it. The old cross brought tears and blood; the new cross brings laughter. The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the [old] cross; before that cross it bows and toward that cross it points with carefully staged histrionics – but upon that cross it will not die, and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly refuses to bear.

I well know how many smooth arguments can be marshaled in support of the new cross. Does not the new cross win converts and make many followers and so carry the advantage of numerical success? Should we not adjust ourselves to the changing times? Have we not heard the slogan ‘New days, new ways?’ And who but someone very old and very conservative would insist upon death as the appointed way to life?

And who today is interested in a gloomy mysticism that would sentence its flesh to a cross and recommend self-effacing humility as a virtue actually to be practiced [even] by modern Christians? These are the arguments, along with many more flippant still, which are brought forward to give an appearance of wisdom to the hollow and meaningless cross of popular Christianity.

"...Reports of unexplained health problems are soaring – and the primary suspects are the toxic compounds contained in BP’s oil and the chemical dispersants used to break down the crude. From flu-like symptoms to blindness to intense chest pain to severe sinus inflammation, people across the Gulf region are reporting debilitating illnesses in the wake of the spill.

Radioactive elements such as radium, thorium and uranium are known byproducts of the oil production process. These toxic elements are extracted from the ground along with the oil and gas, and are separated from the fossil fuels as part of the production process. Once the NORM is extracted, it is flushed directly back into the ocean in the waste-stream byproduct known as produced water. Their discharge into the Gulf of Mexico has been a daily reality since the 1950s – but the amount that was released into the water from the runaway Macondo Well is unprecedented.

...The Times also uncovered a bombshell “secret industry study” from the American Petroleum Institute (API). The study, written in 1990, states that consuming seafood from the Gulf of Mexico poses “potentially significant risks” of cancer to humans due to the radium levels in produced water discharges.

...Dr. Busby’s report (see link below) on the laboratory findings suggests that as much as 50 kilograms of uranium, or about 110 pounds, were released into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP spill. According to Dr. Busby, the tests showed the uranium content in the oil to be 0.073 mg/kg, or more than 500 times the normal concentration of uranium in seawater.

The uranium content in the oil is not the only concern, radon gases would also have been present in the methane expelled from the well and significant concentrations of radium-226 and radium-228 would have been present in the produced water discharged from the well. No estimates of these radioactive discharges have been publicly released by BP or the federal government.

AHN.com Rising waters continue to pose flood risks for thousands. Tornados, heavy rains and rising pressure on the region's waterways are giving scores of people to worry.

Powerful storms and record-breaking rains caused a deluge of of water to spawn heavy flooding in several central and southern states. The rising water and pressure forced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to explode late Monday evening a levee on the Mississippi River to ease rising waters inundating the town of Cairo.

Nearly 500 National Guard personnel have been deployed to flood-affected areas in Illinois alone.

"There is no way on God's earth that we can control nature," Illinois Governor Pat Quinn said during a visit to the flooded region. "We have to respect nature. And we are going to do our mightiest to make sure that people are safe and sound."